Raeburn

By J. L. Sir Caw

This book is about the work of Sir Henry Raeburn (1756 - 1823) a Scottish portrait painter born in what is now Edinburgh. He became one of Scotland's most famous and revered artists, eventually painting a portrait of King George VI when he visited Scotland in 1822. At that time Raeburn was knighted and appointed to the Scottish court as a limner.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Good Press
• Release date: Apr 25, 2021
• ISBN: 4064066209216

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J. L. Sir Caw

Raeburn

Published by Good Press, 2022

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EAN 4064066209216

Table of Contents

I

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

IN THE SAME SERIES

Plate II.

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I

Table of Contents

If, during the last century, Scotland has shown exceptional activity in the arts, especially in painting, and has produced a succession of artists whose work is marked by able craftsmanship and emotional and subjective qualities, which give it a distinctive place in modern painting, the more than two hundred years which lay between the Reformation and the advent of Raeburn seemed to hold little promise of artistic development. During the Middle Ages and the renaissance the internal condition of the country was too unsettled and its resources were too meagre to make art widely possible. Strong castles and beautiful churches were built here and there, but intermittent war on the borders and fear of invasion kept even the more settled central districts in a state of unrest. Moreover, the fierce barons were at constant feud amongst themselves, and not infrequently the more powerful amongst them were banded against the King. Of the first five Jameses only the last died, and that miserably, in his bed. The innate taste of the Stewarts, no doubt, created an atmosphere of culture in the Court, and this tendency was further strengthened by commercial relations with the Low Countries and political associations with France. Poetry and scholarship were encouraged, if poorly rewarded—one remembers Dunbar's unavailing poetical pleas for a benefice—and relics and old records show that even in those stirring times life was not without its refinements and tasteful accessories. Yet only in the Church or for her service was there the quietude necessary for art work of the higher kinds. Then came the Reformation (during which much fine ecclesiastical furniture and decoration perished) severing the connection of art with religion and sowing distrust of art in any form.

Had the Union of the Crowns not taken place in 1603, it is possible that the art of painting might have developed much earlier than it did. No doubt that event brought healing to the long open sore caused and inflamed by kingly ambitions and national animosities, but it removed the Court to London, and with that some of the greatest nobles, while the change in the religion of the ruling house from Presbyterianism to Episcopacy, which followed, led to the Covenants and the religious persecution, and drove the iron of ascetism into the souls of those classes from whom artists mostly spring. Yet the logical rigidity of the Calvinistic spirit, while taking much of the joy out of life and opposing its manifestation in art, had certain compensating advantages. Disciplining